How to Make Kids Not Racist

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How to Make Kids Not Racist

Rami Niemi

My mom was a product of the civil rights era, and the discussions we had were black and white. Now with my daughters—the older one just turned 5—we’re talking about gay people, about fluid gender, learning Spanish, and we’re talking about black and white. The last thing I want is for my daughters to go into the world, see a person they’ve never seen before, and think that person’s wrong or less than.

If you live in a smaller town, the burden’s on you to be an even more active parent. You can’t trust that your kid’s going to have a classmate’s Muslim family come in and read about the faith—you have to go get that book yourself. I’m lucky that one of my best friends is a white lesbian who adopted a black kid. I didn’t plan that, but I looked to get to know people who are very different from me. It’s important to expose your kids to information that’s not about where you live.

Living in Berkeley, you can wall yourself off with farmer’s markets and drum circles and working for the Sanders campaign even after he drops out of the race. So we go outside: Let’s learn, let’s eat the food, let’s make friends, let’s go home and read books, let’s watch YouTube videos. I’m doing this the way my mom would have if she’d had the Internet.

We put information in front of my older daughter, let things float in. It’s about laying as much info on the table as possible and not being afraid to overload your kid. You’ll know if it’s too much. Correct when you hit the limit, not before. My daughter knows the president is Obama, and because Dad has the TV on all the time, she asks, “Who’s that with Obama?” So now she knows we don’t like Donald Trump because we don’t like Donald Trump’s rules. And when we talk about it, it’s not like she’s parroting it; we’re having a conversation about it.